[THESANTINI]

I just began re-visiting this forum as I'm interested in purchasing a pair of cans. Not much has changed, what was good two-three years ago is still good. Reassuring, when making these so called 'investments' in depreciating assets -- which one may even consider a liability.

Regardless, one thing that is striking me is the discussion of this funny little Chaintek audio card. Back in my day the Turtle Beach Santa Cruz & Audigy cards were known as the better ones. Has the Chaintek surpassed the aforementioned cards? If so, please tell me how and what's different, technically if possible.

 

[Cyrilix]

Quote:

Originally Posted by THESANTINI I just began re-visiting this forum as I'm interested in purchasing a pair of cans. Not much has changed, what was good two-three years ago is still good. Reassuring, when making these so called 'investments' in depreciating assets -- which one may even consider a liability. Regardless, one thing that is striking me is the discussion of this funny little Chaintek audio card. Back in my day the Turtle Beach Santa Cruz & Audigy cards were known as the better ones. Has the Chaintek surpassed the aforementioned cards? If so, please tell me how and what's different, technically if possible.

They have different controllers and different DACs. Audigy uses the emu10k* whereas the Chaintech card uses Via's Envy24 HT-S. Audigy has CS dacs, I think, whereas the Chaintech uses Wolfson dacs. From what I hear, the Chaintech and the M-audio have better sound quality than the Creative cards, which are mainly geared towards gamers and increased fps (although that is partially myth).

 

[sgrossklass]

The AV-710 (along with similar other cards) has a fairly decent DAC (Wolfson WM8728) for channels 7/8, along with a minimal output stage there (an advantage in this case), plus it supports 44.1 kHz natively. Output in 24/96 is possible over both ch7/8 and the digital out but switching between 96 kHz and lower sampling rates requires a reboot. All in all, really not bad for a $25 card. (Beats the SB Live! 24-Bit for playback, which in turn is fairly good in terms of recording for a cheapie.)

Both the "Santa" and the old Audigy are considered obsolete now. The former is an old AC97 based design, the latter is mostly stuck at 48 kHz as well (which is related to the recent lawsuit, as Creative claimed 24/96 support while in fact this only works via the digital out with the original drivers).

The real "killer" sound cards these days are mostly based on the Envy24HT and variants thereof - Revolution 5.1 and 7.1, Prodigy 7.1 and 7.1LT, Aureon 5.1 Sky / 7.1 Space, Juli@, Audiophile 192. Then there's Creative's professional E-MU cards like the 0404 and 1212M, which are based upon the Emu10k2 and unlike Creative consumer cards do provide 44.1 kHz support (though operation tends to be a bit fussy). All of these have DACs and ADCs ranging from fairly good to excellent; the more professional cards (Juli@, Audiophile 192 and the E-MUs) are usually considered to be in a league of their own sonically but the Revo 5.1 apparently isn't too bad either for a consumer card. (The Revo 7.1 appears to be the least good-sounding of the bunch, but also was one of the first designs. The most attractive cards all aren't any older than ~2004.)

 

[seeberg]

What makes me hate Creative SB in any form now is the installation process. It's SOOOOO annoying on my system, and is nothing but trouble compared to the AV710 which I got yesterday. I still don't know how to make it play higher bitrates than 16 on Win98SE, but besides that, the card is amazing so far.

,
Abe